Intimately
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: Kyou and Yuki have hated one another for as long as anyone has known, but is it all just a facade to hide the truth that each of them won't admit?


Disclaimer: FruBa isn't mine, but the poem is.  
  
Eyes like yours.  
  
They tell me everything  
  
Or nothing at all…  
  
Eyes were the most expressive part of the body. They damned a person and admired them at the same time. They lied without a word, and yet they spoke the honest truth with their intensity.  
  
But what were you supposed to believe?  
  
The mouth with its colored words?  
  
Or the eyes that told everything in their quietness?  
  
Intimately.  
  
By miyamoto yui  
  
Everyday, it was the same old thing.   
  
"I'm going to get you today, Yuki!" Kyou would shout at the sleepy-eyed Yuki who was barely conscious enough to register that it was morning. He would lift his head a bit and look at Kyou with an unfazed expression and nothing to say, too tired to.  
  
Kyou wanted to best Yuki in something. Anything.  
  
It wasn't a matter of pride anymore. It was about self-preservation.  
  
Misplaced anger towards someone because of a curse's legend? Did that make any sense at all?  
  
No, not really.  
  
As he walked to school with Tohru and Yuki, he wondered what Yuki thought about whenever he fought him. Was he finding it as tiresome as he did?  
  
And yet, he couldn't stop himself. He had to fight with Yuki.  
  
It wasn't just routine. He wanted something much more…  
  
What he couldn't understand was if it was from himself.  
  
Was it deep inside of himself? Or…  
  
He glanced at Yuki with bitter eyes, but deep inside, he wasn't feeling too angry. Annoyed, yes. Anger? No, it was mostly habitual.  
  
Something they both practiced all these years.  
  
Yuki nodded with a smile as he turned his head to talk to Tohru. They were trying to figure out what else to plant for the vegetable garden, but some part of him wondered what Kyou was thinking. He was awfully quiet and it was making him uncomfortable for some strange reason.  
  
He got the ritual challenge in the morning, but Kyou's eyes told him that he wasn't fighting against him that day.  
  
Kyou was fighting himself.  
  
And he could see it.  
  
Of course he could. He had done the same thing, silently, every day.  
  
His eyes glanced at Kyou once in a while trying to gage the way he was feeling. He wanted to know something about his opponent, but he knew it was something more than that.  
  
How could the rat exist without fighting the cat?   
  
That was something unconceivable to Yuki.  
  
As much as they hated each other and spouted out insults like water from a faucet, they depended on one another and they knew it. One couldn't exist without the other.  
  
They weren't balanced without one another.  
  
When had all this started anyway? As far as he knew, Kyou and he would fight over the smallest things. It started with the banquet legend told to them and it gradually built up from there. Books, games, etc. Everything had to be fought over. Everything led to competition.  
  
Someone had to win.  
  
Anyone would have thought Kyou's bitterness was from the constant losses he had whenever he was competing with Yuki. And anyone would have equally thought Yuki's indifference was due to being tired of being in the same old rut everyday.  
  
That's what happened if you believed everything with your eyes.  
  
During lunch, Kyou, Yuki, Tohru, Haru, and Momiji ate together on the roof together. While everyone was complimenting Tohru's cooking, Kyou was looking down at the fields below. Yuki glanced at him curiously and wondered if there was something truly wrong today.  
  
Sure, they fought and fought, but because of that, there was a silent telepathy that only existed between them. They knew each other's strengths. They knew one another's weaknesses.  
  
So if Yuki could feel that something was wrong, he was probably right. And if Kyou could tell that Yuki was catching on, he was going to ignore it.  
  
While going home that day, Tohru stopped to ask both of them, "I've wanted to ask you guys something all day."  
  
Yuki nodded his head quietly while Kyou looked at her with a concentrated face.   
  
"Is there something wrong today?" she asked them honestly while she looked at both of them, who were walking to each side of her.  
  
Yuki and Kyou silently looked at one another while answering Tohru that there was nothing wrong.  
  
Of course, her instinct was right about them, but they wouldn't ever admit it.  
  
--  
  
That night, while everyone was asleep, Kyou sat on the roof thinking. He looked up to the bright moon and shook his head while closing his eyes. Looking up at the moon again, he grunted in frustration because of the image imprinted inside of his mind.  
  
"Is there something wrong today?" Tohru had asked both of them and he was trying his hardest to hide his insecurities behind his strong façade.  
  
He wasn't going to tell anyone that he wasn't feeling so hot that day because that stupid memory had come back to him: his first true fight with Yuki.  
  
But in this fight, Yuki didn't know he was fighting against him.  
  
And Yuki's eyes looking at him as they came to a mutual understanding…  
  
Just below him, Yuki was in his room and lying in his bed, but his eyes were wide awake. As he looked out the window, the brightness of the moon had illuminated the sky around it. He sighed as he thought about Tohru's question that afternoon.  
  
He was trying to keep a calm expression, trying not to make it obvious that he was concerned about Tohru's worry and Kyou's troubled expression that day.  
  
And when they looked at each other, that was the first time in a long while that they looked at one another without verbal threats or trying to battle one another. They silently understood what the other was saying with their eyes.  
  
"And if we weren't fighting…" Yuki thought to himself, "…would these eyes be different?"  
  
Yuki immediately turned over in shock and irritation. He wasn't going to say anything about that stupid cat.  
  
That his expression was so lost…  
  
So unlike the Kyou he always knew.  
  
And yet that expression today made him think of Kyou differently because it reminded him of something long ago. The hazy memory that held onto to dear life inside of him…  
  
"You always think you're right, Yuki!" a thirteen-year-old Kyou shouted with his hands in fists.  
  
A vein popped and Yuki squinted his eyes in a rage. "I never said anything like that!"  
  
"Then tell me why didn't you meet me when you were supposed to?" Kyou asked as he stepped a bit closer while people in the park were dispersing at their heated argument.  
  
"Because I didn't want to come," Yuki simply said while looking away from Kyou, trying his best not to convey his true emotions to him.  
  
"This time…this time I was going to best you!" Kyou shouted in anger as he took Yuki's white collar with one hand.  
  
Yuki's eyes then looked at Kyou's closely and they watched each other for a moment.  
  
"You'll never beat me," Yuki said with a calm expression as he looked deeply into Kyou's eyes.  
  
"Don't look at me like that," Kyou said with a tone of arrogance that was outwardly telling Yuki not to pity him.  
  
But inwardly, he didn't want Yuki looking at him so…so…  
  
Intimately.  
  
Kyou let go as Yuki walked away from him.  
  
That night, each of them thought,   
  
"There's no way in hell that I'm falling for that bastard. I'm not gay and certainly not for him…"  
  
--  
  
The fighting was Yuki's only link to this person.  
  
This person that made life so interesting for him. His parents didn't talk to him and his brother never seemed to care for him until now. But there was always Kyou, as much as he denied it to himself.  
  
Kyou who was his opponent and friend at the same time.  
  
Kyou stared up at the moon as he still thought of Yuki's expression when he said years ago, "You'll never beat me."  
  
He let go of his grip because he knew that the day he would defeat Yuki would be the day that there would be other realities to realize. And he wasn't ready for them just yet.  
  
Yuki was his distraction, but somehow along the line he learned to hate him so much because he had learned to like him just as much. For in fighting with Yuki, he was considered an equal in the Sohma household while most of the other members never treated him with any respect.  
  
It was Yuki who had respected him.  
  
Yuki was the one who had twistedly made him stronger as the years went by.  
  
Each didn't want to admit defeat because of pride.  
  
And yet each couldn't help but think about the other's honest eyes.  
  
Their words were just breaths of air to shadow what they really thought inside.  
  
Their eyes maybe told just as much.  
  
Looking closely,  
  
They knew that this was more than anger…  
  
More than admiration,  
  
More than respect…  
  
Except, they were going to keep it quiet.  
  
There was something there…  
  
…but they pushed it as far away as they could from one another.  
  
As Yuki closed his eyes, he told himself the same thing he told himself years ago, "I won't let you ever beat me. If I did, I'd lose you little by little, Kyou…"  
  
And Kyou whispered to himself while still staring at the moon, "Some part of me doesn't want to defeat you. Because if I did, you wouldn't be Yuki…"  
  
They were used to each other's image of the other,  
  
the image of the person they had come to care for.  
  
At that moment, Yuki got up and went outside to stare at the roof. Kyou turned his head away from the moon to look down at Yuki.  
  
Quietly, they stared at one another with nothing to say.  
  
Because they were unable to.  
  
They didn't want to.  
  
Owari.  
  
--  
  
Author's note: I wrote this because I wanted to later make a long Yuki and Kyou fic after the Akito x Hatori one. I couldn't see this pairing before, but I made this for my friend Winnie, who was asking me to do one about them.  
  
Well, this was quite interesting for me. Two people who were competing for Tohru partly because they didn't want to admit how they felt for one another? Even trying to convince one another that there was nothing? Yes, very interesting.  
  
(For those in iroirona, this was choice 2 in the anniversary poll and so here was the fic.) 


End file.
